The Surviving
by Hidden Relevance
Summary: Their world is gone. Alison and Helen escape through an anomoly and discover that their timeline was only the beginning. Can they save the alternate timelines? And what about the men they've loved and lost?


**Good lord my muse is HORRIBLE! Horrible I tell you...feeding me a massive plotbunny when I have half a dozen other WIPs. Though, I suppose it's only to be expected when I've just stumbled upon news articles regarding a 4th season (FINALLY) and when I've just discovered I live on the corner of Hart Lane (how's that for a lucky fangirl moment). **

**Or maybe the blame can be placed on Chibi-Kaz and her awesome "Climatology" which was a continuation of the "Cloudy with a Chance of Conors" phenomenon. After seeing all those darling versions of our favorite geek, I began to wonder who else has an alternate version... and what those alternates might have faced. Strangely enough, of the alternates I wanted to know the most about, one was a villian, and one was never actually a character we met. I guess that just screamed possiblities. **

**Either way, this chapter came pouring out in less than 2 hours. Hopefully it's something yall enjoy!**

**BTW, no I don't own anything. Really did any one believe I did?**

I remember hearing once that you will never know someone until the day you hang them over the mouth of an active volcano. I think it was on some sci-fi show, Farscape or Firefly… Something like that. Connor would have known. Course Connor's been dead nearly 5 years give or take a couple timelines. His death was one of the earliest parts of my own volcano, when I was forced to realize I couldn't live a normal life. That none of us could.

It wasn't too terribly surprising that he died when he did; there weren't any of us in the ARC who thought he'd live long after Abby… Well, let's just say he didn't mourn long. Nor was he the last we all mourned. One by one, Cutter and I watched everyone we ever cared for fade out of existence. Some with a bang: Becker with the grenade in the future, his predecessor Tom Ryan under a building, the insufferably brave Sir Lester defending his home and his children from an escaped smilodon. Some, like Abby giving into to the tides and drowning without a word, were gone with only a whimper: Jenny stopped eating after her husband got caught in the crossfire, and Connor, sweet brilliant Connor all but embraced his death by hypothermia.

All of them were horrible, and yet, all of them paled in the face of the last two lives we lost. It's luck, a twisted tragic luck, I think that we didn't lose them both at once. When Stephen… Without Stephen I went mad, and it was only Cutter that kept me from following him down the throat of a megalodon or from drowning myself in the days after his funeral. It was months before anyone would allow me near water. Cutter kept me as sane as it was possible to be with only three of our original team left.

Then we lost Nick, and I truly thought we would lose Cutter as well. Helen (she only became Cutter to me after Nick was gone) became a bloody driven shadow, throwing herself into our work trying to protect as many civilians as she could, leaving nothing for herself at the end of the day.

I think I saved her. Or at least that's what I tell myself when this crazy plan of mine goes its absolute worst. I guess I must have saved her, for all that it felt like taking the coward's way out.

We just left.

I mean, we left _everything_: the ARC, the rampaging creatures from the hundreds of anomalies, the helpless people. Our world was lost, and we knew it. So we left. Hopped an anomaly and just wandered for nearly a year. Cutter was our protector and guide out in the wilds of the past and future. In time, I realized she had almost a sixth sense about the anomalies, seeming to instinctively know when one would appear and for how long. Even sometimes, how safe we might be on the other side. If not for the fact that we were alone, we might have been able to find happiness or at least contentment in that year. We saw wonders and horrors and things that I doubt I can accurately describe even to this day. And then, then it happened. We stumbled upon something unexpected, something…

Well, something that gave us hope for the first time since Abby died. We stumbled upon an alternate timeline which led to dozens of alternate timelines. Each with their own Stephen and Nick and everyone else. It was clear very quickly that none of them were ours, and hell most of them never had to deal with the creatures running loose. Those that did apparently learned about those same creatures long before we did. They dealt with single incursions mostly, not entire migrated colonies moving in and breeding. These worlds had a chance, had a future our's never could.

It was just fascinating. We watched, Cutter and I, observing the strange and the familiar, losing ourselves to the unreal reality of it all. We saw one Connor grow a full beard and join a biker gang, and a married Becker and Sarah raise twins. Another Danny never lost his brother and grew up to be an extreme sports athlete. One unforgettable Abby blazed across international stages as a renowned pop star. Jenny became Claudia who was Lucy two timelines later.

We tried to stay away from our own counterparts, as their lives tended to break our hearts_. _In one world, Helen and Nick never even dated; in another they, too, raised children. In yet a third, their marriage dissolved horribly, something I couldn't understand after knowing how deeply in love they were in my own life. Then there were Stephen and I. To my sorrow, it seemed we rarely connected. In most lives, I apparently wandered off to South American studying diseases or went on to work for some high brow pharmacy company while Stephen worked as a conservationist or guide out in the wilds where he was always more comfortable. In one extremely surreal timeline Stephen and Nick were actually together, which was very strange to watch. Cutter and I agreed it would have been sexy as hell, but still wasn't something we actually wanted to think about for long.

Regardless of what we saw, we did out best to keep from interfering, from guiding our loved ones' alter egos, but it was _hard._

The day we both cracked, it was due to a natural disaster. Massive storms set rivers flooding, and Nick's research teamwas nearly swept away trying to protect the rare beasty Stephen had been tracking for days. What can I say? The choice between interference and watching our loved ones die again was an easy one to make. We dove in, and pulled as many people to safety as we could, and those people in turn saved others. It was a triumph against the elements, against death itself I thought.

And then we were gone, running terrified that Nick or Stephen might have recognized us or worse recognized that we weren't the "us" they knew. It took awhile for the fear to wear off: a good long while of watching that timeline with our hearts in our throats, praying we hadn't set an apocalypse of a paradox in motion. As it turned out, we hadn't. And, though granted I'm biased, I dare say maybe we had changed that world for the better. God knew our own world had taken a final turn for the worse when our men died.

That wouldn't happen in this world, at least not yet.

It was that knowledge that set us on a new path that gave us a new purpose of sorts. Cutter and I, we could protect the people we loved, one lifetime at a time. We began to wander again, slipping in and out with each averted crisis, feeling finally like our survival might actually have a greater meaning.

Then we found _this _timeline: this future that was every bit as bleak as our own. It was a shock, slipping through one harmless looking anomaly into hell. The predators that attacked us were nothing we'd ever seen before, vicious things that taxed even our well-honed survival skills. We managed to evade the creatures by barricading ourselves in one of the countless abandoned and burnt out buildings.

That building changed everything. There on the walls were oh-so-familiar emblems, signs that drew us deeper into the halls of what must have once been an ARC facility. And it was there, on the lowest level where apparently the creatures had never ventured, we found the wonder that some unknown Connor must have had a hand in. We called that expansive database the "Encyclopedia" for lack of a better name, and the strange handheld devices were fondly referred to as anomaly "Tom Toms." It was a moment of celebration for us. After all, these were our ticket to reaching even more timelines, to hopefully save even more lives. The delightful cabinets of advanced weaponry probably would help too. Cutter called me a savage when she saw my near-glee, but she still loaded up on ammo herself. We'd learned that lesson long before in our own timeline.

First things first, though, before any other missions, we had to help this timeline. As useful as the tech might be, a future that seemed completely bereft of human life was not one we wanted to leave intact. Some judicious hacking into the Encyclopedia led to the discovery of some of the then-Connor's personal journals and mission logs.

Those told us everything we could possibly want to know. And everything we _never_ wanted to know. I was lucky Cutter's so much stronger than she looks. I doubt I would have handled the news that my alter-ego was a husband-murdering and world-ending psychopath nearly as well as she did. A few choice words and one episode of throwing rubble across the room, and Cutter was ready to dive back into her research.

It took time to figure out which major history point we would need to go back and alter. There were dozens of disasters that might possibly re-set the timeline to a better one, and narrowing down just one moment to interrupt, just one life to save was a daunting prospect. So too was the prospect of actually setting ourselves _against,_ well, against one of our selves. For the first time, we would have an enemy, and it was one we had to defeat or leave this world in the horror that we'd found it in. These were decisions I wasn't sure I was prepared to make.

In the end, it was Cutter who decided, and I couldn't help but wonder if she chose it out of friendship for me as opposed to simple strategy.

I didn't really care. All I cared about was that this time I would save him. This time I wouldn't let him die.

With that goal in mind, I familiarized myself with the weight of the several weapons I'd chosen so as to be absolutely prepared. Cutter loaded a pair of pistols and then took one last perusal through the Encyclopedia before tucking a Tom Tom into her belt.

"Alison, are you ready?"

I was.

**So yeah, Alison and Helen Cutter are on a mission. Who'd of thunk it, huh? Let me know what you think guys- I honestly have no idea if this is something yall would want to read! **

**BTW, I'm extremely iffy on the Title of this ficlet. That part fought me hard, so let me know if you like it or if you've got any other suggestions!**


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